A Baby...Maybe? & How to Hunt a Husband Read Free Page A

think?”
    â€œWe have to talk.”
    â€œI can be out there tomorrow morning. Got a date tonight.”
    Rex stomped to his truck. He normally wasn’t an angry man, only his patience was being sorely tested. He threw the phone into the truck and climbed in after it. He gunned the engine, eased his way onto the freeway and headed toward his office.
    When he walked through the door he saw his lab technician, Cathy, sitting behind the receptionist’s desk talking on the phone. That meant only one thing—Barbara hadn’t shown up again today. “The billboards must have gone up either in the dark last night or early this morning,” Cathy said. If it were possible to be shot dead by looks alone, the look Cathy sent him would have him dead on the floor.
    The other phone lines were ringing incessantly. She said goodbye to the caller, then punched the other lines to put everyone on hold. “Where have you been?” She was scowling at him. For no reason as far as he was concerned.
    â€œI went to see the billboards. You knew that.”
    â€œWhere’s your cell phone? I’ve been calling you for the last twenty minutes.”
    â€œIn the truck.”
    â€œDid you have it on?”
    â€œSure I did. I called Clay.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you answer?”
    â€œI didn’t hear it.” He remembered throwing it in the cab of the truck. Maybe he overthrew and it went out the other window and was there in the grass somewhere near Mama Jo’s. He wasn’t going to admit that to Cathy though. “Did Barbara call?”
    â€œOf course. She said she wasn’t coming in today. She has a sore toe.”
    â€œFire Barbara.” He had hired her as a favor to his mother. Every time he’d done someone a favor lately, he ended up getting burned. Barbara was absent more than she was in the office. “Forget that, I’ll call my mother and have her fire Barbara.” He was done doing favors for people. He was done being nice. From now on he was going to be a bastard. Then he wouldn’t have to worry about obscene billboards and receptionists who didn’t show up for work.
    â€œOh, nuts,” Cathy moaned when the phone lines started ringing again, the time limits on the hold buttons up. She picked up the receiver and shoved it in Rex’s chest. “You answer it,” she whispered.
    â€œYes, Mrs. Taggert. I saw them this morning,” he said. “They’ll be taken care of as soon as possible.”
    Before he could hand the phone back to Cathy, it rang again. She punched in another button, pushed his hand and phone back toward his face and he got another earful, this time from his own mother. When he was off the phone with her, he pulled the plug out of the wall. Silence. Blissful, peaceful silence.
    Until Cathy broke it. “Do you know how many phone calls I’ve gotten this morning about that bull you have hung over the freeway?” Cathy asked. “And I’m using the word hung in the literal sense, as in hanging the billboard, not the hung bull.”
    He glared at her. “I know what you’re talking about and since I just saw them, I have a pretty good idea what you’ve been going through.”
    â€œMama Jo called and she wants you to keep them up forever,” she said. “Apparently her business is booming.”
    â€œIt’s only midmorning.” Although he had noticed the parking lot had been nearly full.
    â€œMaybe it’s the breakfast crowd.”
    â€œThe billboards are obscene.”
    â€œI haven’t seen them yet. I’ll drive over there later and tell you what I think. Just so you know, though,” she added, “a couple of the calls were serious. The president of the Pegleg High School Future Farmers of America wants to know if the bull’s penis is proportionate. He wanted to know if there were special hormones you were feeding LuLu that he could experiment with